I had a bit of time this morning while the lass was playing happily on her own, so I tore down some panelling along the wall running from the kitchen to the living room. We’re planning to put up the “magic” wall-smoothening wallpaper here, and paint it white, before hiding the whole thing with shallow bookshelves. I wonder, of course, whether we shoud dispense with the wallpaper and the paint and just put the shelves up, but figure we might as well do the job properly.
I guess I should disconnect the fuse before doing anything with the socket...
Also, note the use of floorboards to construct the wall. Interesting choice. Considering the price of floorboards vs. mdf I know what I’d have chosen, but whatever.
We'll have to figure out a way of sawing off the end of this moulding, it continues through the wall into the bedroom.The top of the wall with the godawful glass inserts. And a hole through into the bedroom.
While we’re at it we should probably substitute those glass inserts with something else. Like, I dunno, wall? That seems slightly complicated, though. It’d be easy, of course, to just slot some pieces of mdf or something in over the glass and paper over that. It would look ok from the living room side, but probably quite nutty from the bedroom. On the other hand, who cares what it looks like from the bedroom?
1. The bloodbank has Moomin mugs again! My visit yesterday resulted in 0.5 litres less blood but in return I got this:
Yay!
2. I registered at Pinterest. My username is Lattermild. There isn’t much to see, yet, but that’s bound to change. If you have your own board(s) or suggestions for whom I should follow, let me know.
3. We seem to have succeeded at getting the lass a place at Birralee as of this autumn. It’s for pre-school (or nursery school), and doesn’t guarantee a place at school proper, but I am quite delighted in any case.
4. If you read Swedish you should go read this entry by Ketchupmamman, which says all the things I’d like to have said about why genderised clothing for kids bothers me.
Or happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day, if you like. It’s windy here in Trondheim, so perhaps I should say Happy Windsday!
As someone who’s never “celebrated” valentine’s day due to, well, finding the idea of synchronised romance completely silly, I find the increasing amount of exposure here in Norway plain irritating. Because it seems to be on the rise. The shops are full of it, obviously. Facebook is full of it. Twitter is full of it, too. I’ve had it up to here. And, yes, even the papers. Adressa was kind enough to tell us that even if we’d forgotten there were still a couple of restaurants left that had tables available tonight, but not many, so we needed to hurry. Yeah. Because going out for a romantic dinner on the same days as absolutely everybody else is sooooo appealing. They probably even squeeze a couple of extra tables in, just to make the most of the mad spending spree. I’d probably be about as comfortable as Harry was at Madame Puddifoot’s with Cho, even if I’d be somewhat more confident of “what to do” with my date (assuming I’d get the husband to come along in the first place, which is doubtful, I’d probably have to go on my own, and what fun is that?).
Which all reminded me of an earlier post on media antics in relation to valentine’s: A rose by any other name. I wish I knew what happened to the poor “winner”.
Oh, and I got roses this weekend. And tulips. Though the husband was very clear on the point that they were for Sunday – which was mother’s day here in Norway – NOT Monday. We sort of celebrate mother’s/father’s day, though rather half-heartedly. I did remember to send my mother a message – at 9:30 pm. Not so impressive.
The flowers are nice, though.
PS: I do. Truly, madly, deeply. I try not to wait for some random Monday in February to tell him, though.
To start with, let me just say that though I’ve been craving a dedicated crafting space for years, I had no idea how ridiculously happy it would make me. I’ve been sewing today – in my new Dedicated Crafting Space – and every so often I would pause and just… savour the feeling. I’m either mad or just counting my blessings.
Anyway, this is what it looks like when I’m in the middle of something:
At least for the moment, it's unlikely to stay this tidy
Furnishingwise I’ve mostly been working on details today, figuring out what goes where on the shelves, hanging another picture and so on. Some details, therefore:
Two prints hungToo trueA library worthy of Jorge Louis Borges
The top print is from The Black Apple on Etsy, and was purchased about a year ago, I think. I’m thrilled to finally have it up on the wall. It’s been languishing in its shipping envelope since it arrived, as I really had no place to hang it, but I just had to have it anyway. The quote, by the way, is attributed to Morrisey. The bottom one is also from Etsy, from Industrial Fairytale, and arrived only last week – and it’s still available, so if you want one for yourself, go get it!
I’m liking the way this is working out so far, the plan is still to fill the wall with book-related prints and such. I’m expecting to stick to black frames to create some sense of order, and I’m also expecting to take my time filling the space, waiting to find pieces that I really love instead of falling for the temptation to buy things just to fill it. I also know I have several things in boxes and such that might work.
The frames are Ribba from IKEA, and the one problem I’ve discovered so far is that the passepartout in these are for A4, whereas the prints, naturally, are American letter size. If you click one the images to get a larger version you can probably see that there is a gap on either side of the print. I’m going to have to get new passepartouts done, in other words, but in the meantime this will have to do. Having them on the wall makes me happy, gap or not.
The reading nook before adding the last picture
Another detail to note is the lovely little pillow, which is from Syko. I’ve been a faithful reader of her blog for quite some time, so I had to have one of her creations – I also bought her book, Scandinavian Stitches, which is quite wondeful.
The curtains, by the way, are moving into the lass’ room when we get a rod up in there, and I’m making new ones for this room. If she ever “grows out of them” though, they might well be moving back, since I’m still as much in love with them as I was when I bought them before she was born.
About a week ago I started putting up our old Ivar-shelves in the office, and found to my annoyance that we were about 1 centimetre short of fitting five widths in there. We considered several solutions, one of which was to shave 1/2 a centimetre off each end. However, I suddenly remembered that once we get around to redoing the bathroom we will want to take 40-50 centimetres out of this space anyway, so there was really no point in going for a perfect fit.
The bathroom is on the other side of the wall behind the chair, so this is the wall we'll want to move
So we just put up one height using the narrower shelves. All was right with the world again.
The rest of the wall
Then I spent a few nights (well bits of a few nights) getting the Hemnes daybed together. And today we went to IKEA to get a mattress for it, and to look for useful bits in the “rejects” corner for the desk arrangement. I decided a while ago to go for kitchen tops instead of “desks”, as I suspect they’ll be more hardy and take kindlier to any messy crafting we might want to do in here.
Daybed up, with mattress and new pillows (they were on sale)Two kitchen countertops at 33 and 38 % off for minor faultsKitchen cabinet at half off, two desk legs at full price in the background
So with that all in place we started constructing a desk. I got adjustable desk legs since I wanted something a tad higher than 70 centimetres, but wasn’t entirely sure what to do to get the kitchen cabinet to the right height. However, a search of the flat unearthed some shelves that we removed from the kitchen cabinets because they were not needed, and with those screwed on to the bottom (and edged with duct tape to avoid the raw edges becoming dust magnets) I had myself a hack:
Pre duct tape. Note the felt pads cleverly covering the screws.
Then it was a simple matter of connecting the desk legs to one end of the long countertop and the hacked cabinet to the other, and voilla, a desk:
Love it
Because I hadn’t quite worked out in my mind how this was going to work I only got two desk legs today. So the idea is to get two more and connect the shorter countertop to the other half of that cabinet to create one long desk. And, yes, the desk runs the length of the shelving – in front of it. It’s going to work pretty well, belive me. I’ve already started getting stuff onto the shelves, and it’s perfect.
That office chair, by the way? Also from the rejects corner, at half off. Purchased a couple of weeks ago. Have I mentioned I love IKEA?
I’ll snap some more pictures tomorrow, in daylight.
Fra Deer Darling, som foruten en svært lesbar blogg har en nettbutikk full av lekre saker :)
Med det følger det selvsagt en utfordring, nemlig å svare på følgende spørsmål:
1.Ta opp nærmeste bok og slå opp på side 18, linje 4. Hva står det der?
Shoreditch, Hoxton and Hackney are three conceptual entities jostling to occupy the same physical space with residents of the area altering their addresses in line with current fashion.
2.Hva var det siste du så på tv?
Jeg husker faktisk ikke, det var forrige helg (hvis man ikke teller det jeg overser av barnetv, da).
3.Bortsett fra datamaskinen, hva hører du nå?
Mannen som puster. Snart: På spåret på svensk tv.
4.Når var du sist ute og hva gjorde du da?
Var på jobb. På vei hjem hentet jeg Gambia-albumet. Mer om det senere (but I løøøøøøve it).
5.Hva har du på deg nå?
Mysbyxer i velour og en svart t-sjorte.
6.Hva var den siste filmen du så?
Eh. Halve Stuart Little 3 her før barnetv. Skjønt “så”, jeg prøvde vel egentlig å la være å se på. Ellers ser jeg utrolig lite film for tiden. Den siste jeg husker å ha sett på, i forstand “fulgt med på hele” er Toy Story 3 (som var FANTASTISK).
7.Skulle du overveie å flytte til utlandet?
Tja. Vi tenker på en måte på å ta et år eller to “ute”, enten i Storbritannia eller (når snuppa blir noe eldre) i Afrika noe sted. Det siste forutsatt at vi kan finne noe å gjøre der vi gjør nytte for oss, men ingen av oss er akkurat Norsk Folkhjelp-kandidater eller noe yrkesmessig, så jeg vet ikke hvor realistisk det er. Men jeg vil ikke flytte til utlandet permanent, nei. Jeg har bodd i andre land enn Norge og vet at før eller senere blir hjemlengselen for stor.
Awarden skal så sendes videre til syv stykker. Der sliter jeg litt, særlig siden maaaange har fått den før. På den annen side er det kanskje bare hyggelig å få den igjen? “Beautiful” på hver sin måte er følgende blogger(e):
Man står selvsagt fritt til å ignorere tildelingen, jeg er selv kjent for bekymringsløst å bryte kjeden dersom noen er gal nok til å sende meg kjedebrev, så jeg har forståelse for slikt.
She is well and truly installed now, and seems to like it better than her old room, despite the fact that it is noticeably smaller. She’s still in love with the wall colour, which is good. The lamp is a temporary solution, the walls next to the bed are masonary and hell to drill in, so we haven’t quite figured out how to give her a permanent reading light. For the time being, this works.
Bookshelves
Two Billy bookshelves, purchased a few years ago while you could still get them 60 cm wide. We have a lot of children’s books. This is most of the ones with pictures, there are boxes and boxes of books for reading aloud or for reading to oneself once she gets to that stage, as it is she “reads” anywhere between five and thirty books before going to sleep every evening. It’s best to instill good habits early, you know.
I meant to take some more detailed pictures, in order to tell you a little about some of the books, but it seems I forgot. I might get around to it later. In the meantime, let me show you a nice little piece of furniture, purchased long before I even met the husband.
Isn't it lovely?
Yes, it’s child size. Found at a flea market in Oslo for a mere 100 kroner in 2001. My only regret is not buying its twin, too. I can’t remember why I decided to buy only the one, I might have been short on cash, I suppose.
Vi bakte polarbrød forrige helg. Vi bruker oppskriften fra Alvebento-bloggen, bortsett fra at vi bruker vanlig melk. Denne gangen ble det også vanlig (økologisk) sukker og en del mer diverse grovt mel, siden det viste seg at vi ikke hadde fullt så mye hvetemel som vi trengte. Snuppa synes disse er kjempegode og spiser helst ikke annet brød. Fordelen fra mitt ståsted er at det ikke er noe skorpe som ikke blir spist opp – noe som er et problem ofte nok med vanlig brød – og at jeg har kontroll på ingrediensene. Sist oppdaget jeg at det funket vel så fint å bruke pepperkakeformer til å lage fordypninger med som å prikke – og det går dessuten mye fortere. Snuppa hjelper til å bake ut, med varierende entusiasme. Derav den noe uortodokse fasongen på det nederste brødet. Så lenge hun spiser dem opp er jeg ikke så nøye på hvordan de ser ut.
At the moment I’m about half way through crocheting a granny square blanket, which I discovered – to my delight – was a very simple thing to crochet. See, the problem with most crocheting patterns for my part – and with most knitting patterns too – is having to keep count and remember where I’d got to when I pick something up after a break. But with granny squares I don’t have to keep count, as it’s easy to tell at a glance where you are on a particular square. Lovely stuff.
Anyway, I’ve started collecting links for inspiration, and added a few blogs to my feed, too (most notably Bad Monkey and Kaptein Biff). For my next project I think I’ll try this pattern:
Circle in square pattern from Sols(tr)ikke (Norwegian)
Unless I can find a good pattern for a square with a flower portrudin before then, as I’d like to make a blanket like that for a friend who expressed nostalgia for that particular type.
But I might consider another circle in square pattern that Bad Monkey linked to yesterday, namely this one:
